Author: Reg Twigg
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241965101
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 336
Get Book
Book Description
Survivor on the River Kwai is the heartbreaking story of Reg Twigg, one of the last men standing from a forgotten war. Called up in 1940, Reg expected to be fighting Germans. Instead, he found himself caught up in the worst military defeat in modern British history - the fall of Singapore to the Japanese. What followed were three years of hell, moving from one camp to another along the Kwai river, building the infamous Burma railway for the all-conquering Japanese Imperial Army. Some prisoners coped with the endless brutality of the code of Bushido by turning to God; others clung to whatever was left of the regimental structure. Reg made the deadly jungle, with its malaria, cholera, swollen rivers, lethal snakes and exhausting heat, work for him. With an ingenuity that is astonishing, he trapped and ate lizards, harvested pumpkins from the canteen rubbish heap and with his homemade razor became camp barber. That Reg survived is testimony to his own courage and determination, his will to beat the alien brutality of camp guards who had nothing but contempt for him and his fellow POWs. He was a risk taker whose survival strategies sometimes bordered on genius. Reg's story is unique. Reg Twigg was born at Wigston (Leicester) barracks on 16 December 1913. He was called up to the Leicestershire Regiment in 1940 but instead of fighting Hitler he was sent to the Far East, stationed at Singapore. When captured by the Japanese, he decided he would do everything to survive. After his repatriation from the Far East, Reg returned to Leicester. With his family he returned to Thailand in 2006, and revisited the sites of the POW camps. Reg died in 2013, at the age of ninety-nine, two weeks before the publication of this book.
Author: Reg Twigg
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241965101
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 336
View
Book Description
Survivor on the River Kwai is the heartbreaking story of Reg Twigg, one of the last men standing from a forgotten war. Called up in 1940, Reg expected to be fighting Germans. Instead, he found himself caught up in the worst military defeat in modern British history - the fall of Singapore to the Japanese. What followed were three years of hell, moving from one camp to another along the Kwai river, building the infamous Burma railway for the all-conquering Japanese Imperial Army. Some prisoners coped with the endless brutality of the code of Bushido by turning to God; others clung to whatever was left of the regimental structure. Reg made the deadly jungle, with its malaria, cholera, swollen rivers, lethal snakes and exhausting heat, work for him. With an ingenuity that is astonishing, he trapped and ate lizards, harvested pumpkins from the canteen rubbish heap and with his homemade razor became camp barber. That Reg survived is testimony to his own courage and determination, his will to beat the alien brutality of camp guards who had nothing but contempt for him and his fellow POWs. He was a risk taker whose survival strategies sometimes bordered on genius. Reg's story is unique. Reg Twigg was born at Wigston (Leicester) barracks on 16 December 1913. He was called up to the Leicestershire Regiment in 1940 but instead of fighting Hitler he was sent to the Far East, stationed at Singapore. When captured by the Japanese, he decided he would do everything to survive. After his repatriation from the Far East, Reg returned to Leicester. With his family he returned to Thailand in 2006, and revisited the sites of the POW camps. Reg died in 2013, at the age of ninety-nine, two weeks before the publication of this book.
Author: Paul H. Kratoska
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780415309516
Category : World War, 1939-1945
Languages : en
Pages : 476
View
Book Description
Author: Clifford Kinvig
Publisher: Brasseys Uk Limited
ISBN: 9781857532050
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 236
View
Book Description
Uses Japanese material together with the accounts and illustrations of the prisoners themselves to tell the story of the Burma-Siam railway. The text evaluates the railway primarily as a response to a logistic imperative, but also as the focus for cultural and racial clashes.
Author: Peter J. Green
Publisher: Mainline & Maritime
ISBN: 9781900340458
Category : Transportation
Languages : en
Pages :
View
Book Description
A photographic journey along the infamous River Kwai Railway in the 21st Century, featuring both tourist and local trains, as well as works trains, preserved artefacts and other features of the line.
Author: H. Robert Charles
Publisher: Motorbooks
ISBN: 9780760328200
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 250
View
Book Description
From June 1942 to October 1943, more than 100,000 Allied POWs who had been forced into slave labor by the Japanese died building the infamous Burma-Thailand Death Railway, an undertaking immortalized in the film "The Bridge on the River Kwai." One of the few who survived was American Marine H. Robert Charles, who describes the ordeal in vivid and harrowing detail in Last Man Out. The story mixes the unimaginable brutality of the camps with the inspiring courage of the men, including a Dutch Colonial Army doctor whose skill and knowledge of the medicinal value of wild jungle herbs saved the lives of hundreds of his fellow POWs, including the author.
Author: Hilary Custance Green
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 147387002X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 280
View
Book Description
The ordeals of the POWs put to slave labour by their Japanese masters on the Burma Railway have been well documented yet never cease to shock. It is impossible not to be horrified and moved by their stoic courage in the face of inhuman brutality, appalling hardship and ever-present death.While Barry Custance Baker was enduring his 1000 days of captivity, his young wife Phyllis was attempting to correspond with him and the families of Barrys unit. Fortunately these moving letters have been preserved and appear, edited by their daughter Hilary, in this book along with Barrys graphic memoir written after the War. Surviving the Death Railways combination of first-hand account, correspondence and comment provide a unique insight into the long nightmare experienced by those in the Far East and at home. The result is a powerful and inspiring account of one of the most shameful chapters in the history of mankind which makes for compelling reading.
Author: Paul H. Kratoska
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780415309561
Category : World War, 1939-1945
Languages : en
Pages : 328
View
Book Description
Author: Charles Steel
Publisher: Pen and Sword
ISBN: 1473826608
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 192
View
Book Description
Charles Steel took part in two military disasters - the Fall of France and the Dunkirk evacuation, and the Fall of Singapore. Shortly before the latter, he married Louise. Within days of being captured by the Japanese, he began writing a weekly letter to his new bride as means of keeping in touch with her in his mind, for the Japanese forbade all writing of letters and diaries. By the time he was liberated 3 1/2 years later, he had written and hidden some 180 letters, to which were added a further 20 post-liberation letters. Part love-letter, part diary these unique letters intended for Louise's eyes only describe the horror of working as a slave on the Burma - Siam Railway and, in particular, the construction of the famous Bridge over the River Kwai. It is also an uplifting account of how man can rise above adversity and even secretly get back at his captors by means of 'creative accounting'!. Now, we can share the appalling and inspiring experiences of this remarkable man.
Author: Brian Bond
Publisher: Casemate Publishers
ISBN: 1783034408
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 192
View
Book Description
Charles Steel took part in two military disasters - the Fall of France and the Dunkirk evacuation, and the Fall of Singapore. Shortly before the latter, he married Louise. Within days of being captured by the Japanese, he began writing a weekly letter to his new bride as means of keeping in touch with her in his mind, for the Japanese forbade all writing of letters and diaries. By the time he was liberated 3 1/2 years later, he had written and hidden some 180 letters, to which were added a further 20 post-liberation letters. Part love-letter, part diary these unique letters intended for Louise's eyes only describe the horror of working as a slave on the Burma - Siam Railway and, in particular, the construction of the famous Bridge over the River Kwai. It is also an uplifting account of how man can rise above adversity and even secretly get back at his captors by means of 'creative accounting'!. Now, for the first time, we can share the appalling and inspiring experiences of this remarkable man.
Author: Lt. Colonel Alfred Knights
Publisher: Arena books
ISBN: 1909421006
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264
View
Book Description
This book presents one of the most vivid descriptions of day-to-day life in a Japanese POW labour camp to have appeared so far. The story follows the experiences of the Norfolk Territorial Regiment from 1942 to 1945, under the command of Lt. Col. Knights, during and after the fall of Singapore. Many will recollect having seen the film, The Bridge on The River Kwai. It tended to fictionalise certain matters of fact. This book, drawn directly from a memoir only recently uncovered, reveals that the Japanese designed railway was successfully completed with the forced labour of Allied troops in conjunction with Chinese and Malay captives. The Royal Norfolks were allocated a section of the line which required excavating deep cuttings in the rock hills parallel with the river. They had their 'own' camp with a Japanese officer in charge. He constantly pressed for quicker progress, and for work to be done by all the prisoners, including those in the camp hospital and their officers, contrary to international law. The Regiment's experiences are reported by Lt. Col. Knights in his book. He gives details of his own and others' sufferings, both those inflicted by their captors and those occurring from tropical diseases and insects, all being worsened by a lack of medicines and food. Some of the local Thais, at great risk to themselves, provided a little of both of those commodities. After the railway was completed, the survivors were marched back into Thailand. There they were required to dig a deep ditch round their camp. It was suspected that this would be their grave when they were shot, if the Japanese decided that they had lost the war. Fortunately the two atomic bombs resulted in the Japanese Emperor himself announcing their surrender, forestalling that action. The final chapters of the book are filled with excitement and tension in the efforts of the British officers to hoodwink their captors.
